


Fraternizing

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [13]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is the patron angel of queers, Crowley is an experienced depressive, Depression, Don't get your hopes up on the Alice front, Other, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, bosses suck, it's okay to hate me for this, queer death, the long nap, visits from Head Office
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-16 09:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: How things go to hell in a handbasket, 1862.





	1. Golden Afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it’s the afternoon you think it is, and though it’s remembered now as a “Golden Afternoon,” according to contemporary newspapers the weather was in fact very English. I have strong Opinions on the Rev. Dodgson and if you think that man was a pedophile I invite you to go read what actual little girls he knew said about him.

Aziraphale was worried about Crowley. Not enough to spoil a day in Oxford, but enough to shadow all the time he spent there, performing Crowley’s assignment and his. A peculiarly complicated matter, this time, since they were supposed to be targeting different, but overlapping, groups of dons, graduates, and undergraduates who for whatever reason had remained in town during the Long Vac, poisoning or sweetening the well of Britain’s rising elite; plus a little blessing; and then he was supposed to go straight from here to Cambridge, to do it again. They hadn’t even tossed for this trip, as they had long ago divided some of their labor according to areas of expertise. Unless other factors came into play, Aziraphale did university towns, and Crowley did industrial ones.

_Perhaps I should have insisted on a joint operation this time_, Aziraphale mused, leaving behind the rowing club where the last of his marks and charges were enjoying themselves, one with a promising (for certain values of promising) political career in the process of being derailed and another thinking far more seriously about a future in academia than he had previously. Who, in the end, would be counted as a victory for whom, Aziraphale for one had no idea. He had spent all yesterday afternoon, last night, and this morning making the rounds, from the scholars using the Bodleian to the would-be decadents who, unable for whatever reason to travel to raise hell properly on the Continent, had settled in to do so in the most forbidden dives in town, and he needed some refreshment from the stress of inserting and extracting himself naturally and effectively from so many diverse social situations. He anticipated no problem: a walk along the river, a spot of lunch, a return to the Bodleian for his own purposes, and he’d be right as rain.

Crowley always returned from industrial towns wound up and on edge, and not, lately, in a fruitful way. Gone was the glee with which he had once greeted each innovation in technology, the spread of rail (“No more horses! And they’re black and they snort fire and they’ll go everywhere in no time flat!”), and all the exploitable corruptibility and disturbance arising from the ever-accelerating economic shift to capital, labor, and mechanization. Now on his return from such jaunts he buzzed, and drank, and shrugged, and sprawled, and fired off random conversational gambits as his brain ricocheted around the interior of his skull. Aziraphale had seen such phases before, and knew that at some point he would settle into a brooding black mood which would resist all Aziraphale’s skills in distracting him; and then he would hate himself for being such bad company; and then he would sleep for a month, or a year, and wake up his old self again.

Aziraphale knew the pattern, but was not resigned to it. Patterns, after all, could be disrupted, and anything a friend could do to shorten or skip the ugly bits must surely be done. He had been remiss not to realize before he left that it would do Crowley good to come to a town where the river ran clean, birds were the loudest noise, and children like those girls there ran laughing down the road, urging the adult in charge - a youngish, donnish, cheerful type with sidewhiskers - to hurry while he complained amiably of being nothing but a beast of burden.

Aziraphale sensed the demonic aura in the vicinity as the young man’s load of cushions, hamper, and umbrellas slipped free, and took care that his movement to assist blocked malice from approaching the little party. “Goodness,” he said, ensuring that the contents of the hamper had come to no harm as he handed it back, “they should perhaps have provided you with a packsaddle. Would you like a hand?”

The young man blushed to the tips of his ears. “Tha-thank you, I wouldn’t want to p-put you, put you out.”

“Nonsense, we’re walking in the same direction. A river outing, is it?”

It was, Mr. Dodgson taking Dean Liddell’s girls for a treat, in defiance of threatening rain, because - as the girl named Alice declared - if they didn’t do things when it might rain they would never do anything, a sensible attitude for an English child to take. The group was wholesome and sweet as a fresh batch of tarts, and Aziraphale took personal offense at the notion of a demon attempting to interfere with them. He saw them well-disposed in the boat (which the two older girls insisted upon rowing) and cast them off with a blessing for a golden afternoon they would remember happily for a long, long time. He then pulled in his own aura to minimal detectability (he couldn’t do it as well as Crowley, but he could do it) and went demon-stalking.

The demon looked more or less like an undergraduate, of the sort who will be sent down at the next opportunity, and Aziraphale found him on the footpath following the river, slouching along with his hands in his pockets, stewing in evident frustration. Aziraphale strode up alongside him, seized his elbow in passing, and swept him along with a stern: “All right, my lad, where is he and what sort of nefarious plot was _that_ supposed to be in aid of?”

The demon squeaked, and Aziraphale Saw that his beast-aspect was a vole. “Who? What? I don’t know what you mean!” He leaned back and dragged his feet, trying to loosen Aziraphale’s grip.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, guiding him off the path to a more private location. “Oh, I suppose you have to try, but I assure you, deception is as useless as it is tedious! I_ know_ Crowley’s here, been trying to get a line on him all morning. It must be more serious than I thought, if he’s summoned minions, but you won’t win yourself any favor with_ him_, by making _me_ drag the information out of you.”

“_Crowley’s here_?” The demon’s eyes grew wide with horror. “I didn’t know, honest, nobody tells me nothing!”

“Do you think I was incorporated yesterday? Everyone knows he doesn’t like lesser demons popping randomly around his territory, mucking up his too-clever little schemes. You wouldn’t dare show up in the vicinity of an active operation if you weren’t part of it.” He made a show of scanning the immediate area. “And he won’t be pleased that I blocked you. The sooner you make that_ my_ problem instead of _yours_, the better for you, Mr. -?”

“Myodur, sir.”

Heaven bless human manners! That trick had no business working, yet it almost always did. He couldn’t banish someone properly without knowing his name. “You may call me Mr. Fell. How nice to meet you. Now, Mr. Myodur, there’s no need for unpleasantness. Tell me your part in this and I’ll banish you, no muss, no fuss, and you can tell Crowley whatever story you like about how desperately you resisted me. I understand my banishments hardly hurt at all. If I have to put a truth geas on you to find out what I need to know, though, I’m _not_ taking it off, and you can explain to your masters how I waylaid you on a public thoroughfare, till you’re blue in the face.”

“Please, I didn’t know, honest!” The demon went limp. “I’m not with Crowley! I’m assigned to ruin a family and I can’t make headway nohow, so I thought, let’s go exploring, find a weak spot. So I’ve been going around to all the kids that’ve left home, see what I could do with them. And this one, he’s my chance!”

“What chance could you possibly see for your sort of mischief in that lovely young man?”

“Are you joshing me? Little girls are the _only_ people he’s comfortable with. Folks trust him with their kids.”

“And rightly so. I took a good look, I assure you - with the girls in his charge his Virtues are on high alert. You’d need intimate contact to tempt him to anything, and you - if you’ll excuse my saying so - are_ not_ someone folks would trust with their children, so an invitation to join the river party was hardly in the cards.”

“No, but he has a blank spot in his appetites, doesn’t he? All I have to do is get a touch of him, just once, slide a little Lust in there, point it at the girls - the rest’ll do itself!”

Aziraphale held the demon a bit tighter. “I see,” he said. “Well! Now I know you’re not with Crowley - composed as he is, entirely of faults, yet he wouldn’t tolerate anything so crude and slipshod” _so disgusting_ “in an operation of his. Have you forgotten what your job _is_? You can ruin any number of lives, grafting sins onto people willy-nilly, but if you don’t engage their free will what’s it in aid of?”

The demon gaped, visibly reviewing the conversation in his head to discover how he’d come to have an angel lecturing him on proper tempting procedures.

“Well, I haven’t time to waste on you,” Aziraphale continued, giving him no time to gather his wits before snapping on a geas to make him feel violently ill at harming children directly or indirectly. Getting that undone should keep him busy for awhile. In almost the same motion, he placed his free hand on top of the demon’s head, squashing his hat, and transferred the arm grip from elbow to shoulder to apply more force. “My regards to your masters, Myodur. Off with you, and don’t come back.”

One good push, and the demon was on his way straight down to Hell, before he could register, much less protest, what was happening. Speed, Aziraphale’d found, was key. Banishments could get messy if you let the demon collect his wits enough to resist. Aziraphale took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped off the stickiness left behind before adjusting his sleeves.

“That’s an odd way to banish a demon,” said Uriel.

Aziraphale jumped. “Oh! Ah. Good, good afternoon, madam!” He tipped his hat. “I didn’t realize you were there.”

“I didn’t mean you to.” She was a bit overdressed for an Oxford summer afternoon; stylish in cream and gold, with a lot of lace and a fetching hat, all striking contrasts with her flawless brown skin. “Why not smite him?”

“Oh, but, smiting involves so much atmospheric alteration! With the weather in its current state, it would certainly bring on a storm, and ruin so many people’s days. No, no, smiting wasn’t called for. I’ve always found that a good geas and a gentle banishment are enough to keep most minor demons out from, out from underfoot.”

“I see.” Her level gaze and carefully modulated voice seemed to hint that “seeing” and “accepting” were not in this case synonymous. “And will that suffice when you catch up to Crowley?”

The last thing he needed was an archangel breathing down his neck while he pretended to look for someone not around to find. “Oh, Crowley’s not here this afternoon!”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Having, ah, well, you see, it is common, with assignments like this, for me to find that Crowley is sent on, on similar errands at about the same time, so it’s my habit, so to speak, to, er, to distract him. When I have to go out of town. Plant some false clues as to my own plans in his way, set up a harmless puzzle for him to solve, that sort of thing. Intellectual challenges are a great weakness of his - he has to show off how much more clever he is than anyone else. That way I get in first and, and steal a march on him, as you might say.” _Don’t babble, don’t babble, it’s not as if she’s Gabriel, she only reports directly to him, only the second in command, not like she’s Sandalphon_ \- “Myodur, of course, did not know this, and the prospect of annoying a higher-ranking demon distracted him enough to render him easy to deal with. So, ah, what, what brings you to this neck of the woods, if I may ask?”

“Random inspection,” said Uriel.

Aziraphale did his best to keep his expression pleasant and not expressive at all. “Oh! New, new policy, is it?”

“No, we’ve always done them,” said Uriel. “I got the short straw this time, and when I threw the dart at the globe it hit England, so you’re the lucky one. How would you say your mission is going?”

“Overall, I think, we’re doing tolerably well. We may finally be making progress on the public hygiene front, as described in my most recent report, but I’ve been disappointed so often it’s hard to say. Crowley keeps me busy of course -“

“No, I mean _this_ mission. Here. Your assignment.”

“Oh! Well, that’s all wrapped up satisfactorily and I think, yes, so far so good. Time will tell whether the specific influences I’ve planted will pay off or not. Free will, you know, very tricky thing. And I’m _so_ glad to have been here to intercept what that demon wanted to do to young Dodgson. I think we can count that as a, as a definite bonus, don’t you? Nice little win for our side.”

“Possibly.” Uriel had a small notebook in her hands suddenly, and an elegant gold pencil with which she wrote something in small letters. “I’ll have to discuss your interaction with that demon with Head Office, however.”

“Really? I, I don’t see why, it’s a tried and true technique, been mentioning it in reports for, well, for centuries -“

“Mm. But I don’t think your reports conveyed how chummy the technique is.”

“_Chummy_? I’m not, how could banishing him be considered _chummy?_”

“You took him by the arm, you spoke to him as an equal, you tried to cut a deal with him -“

“I beg your pardon! That deal was, was predicated on his being under the false impression that I thought he was working with Crowley. It was a _ruse_!”

“And yet you filled the terms of it, banishing him to Hell without hurting him.”

“That got him out of the way and cost me nothing!”

“Nothing? Is it nothing, to be known in Hell as someone who goes easy on demons? Who is willing to have friendly little chats with them, make deals, and give them business advice? Who _fraternizes_?”

“Frater -? Certainly not! I was only being com, commonly civil. Not to mention, it never hurts to apply a little influence. Where it might have some lasting effect. Did you _hear_ what his plan was? It was _dreadful!_ It’s incumbent on me -“

“It was an infernal plan. Of course it was dreadful. It’s not _our_ job to critique how they do _theirs_, Aziraphale. It’s our job to stop _anything_ they try to do.”

“Yes, I know, but there’s, there’s such a thing as nuance. I mean to say -“

Uriel closed her notebook. “I think you’ll find that what you’re calling_ nuance,_ Heaven calls _wasting effort_. Demons are Fallen, if you’ll recall. They can’t be redeemed. They don’t get an eleventh hour. Save your influences for the humans, and spend your chastisements freely on demons, and you won’t go far wrong.”

“But - in my experience -“ Her eyes, Looking at him, were bright and hard as jet beads on a mourning cloak. Aziraphale wilted. “I’ll, I’ll bear it in mind, madam.”

“See that you do. Gabriel may wish to speak to you on the matter, later. So, are you off to Cambridge? Since you’ve already wrapped up your business here?”

“I - yes, well, I was just, when I got distracted I was on my way to get a spot of lunch and, and check the timetables.”

“Timetables?”

“For the trains. That’s how I get about. Pinioned, you know. Can’t fly or do that teleporting trick. And lunch, in addition to being, being pleasant, helps me to, to blend in and get a, a human-eye view of the local situation. Where a spot of blessing or influence or, one of my favorite things is, large tips -“

“Since you’re done here I hardly think any of that’s necessary,” said Uriel. “I can fly you straight to Cambridge and observe how you work.”

“Oh!” _Please no please no please no!_ “That would be, my goodness,_ much_ too kind of you, and and the presence of a lady changes the dynamic of encounters in this particular society - although of course if you wish to contribute some influence of your own, that would be -“

“I can remain invisible,” said Uriel. “I’d rather teleport you there and get this inspection over with than wait about while you play at being human.” She held out her gloved hands. “Let us be off.”

So much for Crowley’s Cambridge temptations getting done! But the presence of an archangel in town would surely count as a good excuse when he wrote his report? Maybe not adequate for the Serpent of Eden, though? What was his standing down there right now? Aziraphale swallowed, nodded, and took her hands. 


	2. Stale, Flat, UnProfitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, back in London, Crowley receives a visitor from Head Office.

London felt empty without Aziraphale in it.

Which was ridiculous, especially when walking through Soho, because the density of humans in the district was higher than it had ever been, anywhere, in history, and Aziraphale’s half of their system of wards, blessings, and amplifications purred right along without his presence, as they’d designed it to.

Crowley had spent most of yesterday at the International Exhibition, made the round of his clubs, gone to a music hall, pubcrawled the East End, watched dawn come up in Regent’s Park, and since then had toured the City and Soho, and not once during that time had he been alone. He had sung along, he had argued, he had laughed, he had drunk, he had gossiped, he had waxed philosophical, he had insulted, he had flattered, he had flirted, he had offended, he had soothed, he had scattered temptations around London like flowers in a meadow, and all he recalled of it with any clarity was the lonesomeness. Never mind that he had gone months and years at a time without a sight or sound of his angel, even in the heady days early in the century. They didn’t need to be in each other’s presence to keep each other company. They only had to be around. And Aziraphale wasn’t around.

A city with Aziraphale was a city with a radiant heart. A city with no Aziraphale was an empty box of noises and smells and depthless shapes, pasted on a flat atmosphere less convincing than the worst backdrop at the worst theater in town. Here lately the world had been a little flat even when Aziraphale was home. Today was like living in an elaborate dollhouse, the only jointed wooden mannequin in an ever-rustling pile of paper dolls.

Crowley turned his steps back toward Mayfair, considering his options for today. He had no project in hand and was fed up with everyday tempting. He’d done enough since seeing Aziraphale off to Oxford to cover his quota for the rest of the year, and yet amid the teeming millions of London the tally of his marks was nothing. And sure, some temptations had been placed so as to have vast knock-on effects, creating exponentially more opportunities for people to engineer their own falls, but those were also opportunities for people to save themselves and anyway - it wasn’t efficient. Perhaps he was spoiled by the elegance of modern machinery, the sheer Sloth of turning a crank or feeding a boiler to replace man-hours worth of hard labor; but Hell’s methods were old-fashioned and not geared to meet the scaling up of expectations created by the growing population, and that left him feeling perpetually inadequate.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have made such grandiose claims in the past, because now Beelzebub expected him to pull things like the Spanish Inquisition and the Reign of Terror out of his arse at the drop of a hat. He _knew_ there was a better way to do things. But he could hardly -

Hang on -

_Who the deuce was meddling with their system?_

Crowley did not run, but lengthened his stride and wove with inhuman speed through the mobile labyrinths of traffic and streets to the intersection of pathways where his field of influence and Aziraphale’s met, at one of the rare access points between the orderly upper-class wealth of Mayfair and the chaotic intellectual and working class ferment of Soho. Regent Street had been designed to be a barrier as much as a thoroughfare, cutting off direct traffic between the two districts, but the city and its supernatural caretakers had breached that barrier here, at the true heart of the shared system, where the two halves meshed in a perpetual motion machine, Temptation and Encouragement, Vice and Virtue. Here the chains of effect springing from simple actions - Aziraphale’s smiles and Crowley’s sneers cascading through adjacent populations - amplified and re-energized each other, so that influences that would have turned back upon themselves and petered out kept going, each incorporated into the other’s sphere, and worked their ways out into neighboring districts. It was elegant, it was beautiful, it was _theirs_, and Dagon was standing on the junction, poking at it.

_Dagon_? Since when did _she_ ever bother coming topside? The Lord of the Files practically lived in her office, correlating and organizing. She was probably the only authority in Hell capable of understanding what she was looking at here, and he had always assumed that she would never put herself into a position to do so. His heart sank down to the sewers as he plastered on his best ingratiatingly nonchalant expression and locked his gait into his most insufferably confident, lazy saunter.

She stood, the still center of a knot of fouled traffic, blocking the intersection in her huge silk-shiny crinoline, yet no one shouted at her. Crowley slipped between a carriage and a cab and bowed with a depth and grace just shy of obvious mockery. “Lord Dagon! What a pleasant surprise! If you had told me you were coming, I could have arranged to meet you and given you a proper tour of the city!”

“I didn’t expect you to be here,” said Dagon, peering coyly out from under the artificial flowers, made of the teeth of aquatic predators, adorning the brim of her satin bonnet. “I understood you were out of town on an assignment.”

“I will be soon enough,” said Crowley. “You remember the railroads? They give me a lot of leeway in meeting my deadlines so I don’t have to drop everything in a hurry to accommodate the Council’s wishes. I can well afford the time to squire you around town and make sure you don’t miss out on anything. Are you here on business or pleasure?”

“Never understood the difference.” Her smile was slick and meaningless, her eyes hard as sea coal. “What’s this I’m standing on, Serpent? I don’t remember anything about it from your reports.”

“It’s an experiment in tying into the Earth’s and London’s natural energies to amplify and expand the range of supernatural evils.”

“That’s odd, because what it _looks_ like is a collaboration with the enemy.” Dagon tapped the precise spot of the junction with her neatly buttoned boot. He felt the system lurch, like a cog rolling over a large piece of grit.

Crowley fawned as if his heart rate had not doubled its speed. “Oh, but look closer! When my local adversary saw what I was doing, he tried to counter me with his own system, so now _I’ve_ countered _him_. See this? That’s a steady stream of evil leaking into his would-be Bastion of Goodness like a cesspit leaking into a well. And this bit? Stealing energy and momentum from his system to strengthen mine.”

“Along with accepting his backwash. Some of this energy is so sweet it makes my teeth ache. All of them.” The flowers on the bonnet gnashed themselves.

Crowley shrugged. “I told you. Experimental. As in _not finished yet._ I’m still analyzing the cost/benefit of the energy gain vs. purification, and it’s all heavenly complicated, if you’ll excuse the expression. Plus I’m curious what Mr. Fusswing’s going to do in response. He’s a slow worker and a pain in the fundament, but he’s not stupid. That’s why I set this up so close to his lair. He’s basically my chief testing environment. If I can get this angelproofed, it could be a game-changer.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then it joins the dust heap of other experiments that didn’t pan out as I’d hoped. What do you think I do up here all century, tempt London one soul at a time?”

She pursed her lips, visibly thinking. Crowley waited until she was about to speak, then forestalled her in the most courteous tones he could manage, given that two cabs collided right next to them at the same time, significantly supporting the point he wished to make. “Lord Dagon, I would love to explain this and any other projects you’re interested in at length, but the middle of the street is hardly the best place to talk business. Why don’t we retire to some establishment worthy of your rank and discuss matters over luncheon?”

“What’s luncheon?” She allowed him to take her arm and guide her around the panicking horses.

“Food. I know the perfect place - five sins operating at full bore with a sprinkling of a sixth. You’ll love it.”

She did. Crowley ruthlessly displaced a visiting head of a minor (from the British perspective) state to get them the best table at Claridge’s and regaled her with a fairy tale about how he had inspired hotels with first-class restaurants in the hope of building institutions embodying all seven sins, and had only not reported it yet because Wrath wasn’t taking hold in the staff properly. With beds upstairs, Mayfair’s intense class consciousness, and money everywhere, all the others were easy enough to point out to her even at this time of day.

Dagon listened; she nodded; she drank tea; she ate little cakes and sandwiches and fruit; she laughed (not so much a bubbly laugh as a geysering one) in all the right places; and she still said, in the end: “All the same, more thorough reporting ahead of time would be useful. We can hardly monitor your progress if we don’t know what you’re doing.”

Crowley leaned in confidentially. “No, no, no, that’d be _fatal_! Literally! I thought _you_, of all demons, would understand that without needing it spelled out._ I_ know and _you_ know - it’s all about performance. I don’t perform, I’m dead meat. But quality work takes _time_ and the result’s only the tip of the iceberg. Set-up, range-finding, experimentation, false starts, long lead times, projects that don’t pan out but provide useful data - _everything_ looks like a failure till it succeeds. And I can’t afford failures! Besides, who wants to read about all of that? You’re already swamped. Everybody knows you’re the most overworked demon in the chain of command - all due respect to Lord Beelzebub, but if zze didn’t have you filtering out all the irrelevant stuff zze’d never have time to do anything. At any given time I might have a dozen, two dozen plates spinning, in hopes that _one_ of them will provide the big payoff that makes it worthwhile. Everything else is garbage, not worth your time.”

“I like to decide what’s worth my time for myself,” said Dagon. “I don’t like not knowing what’s going on, and if it’s not in a report, I don’t know about it.”

“Don’t you, though? Really? You know how to read between the lines. You know how to suck out the good stuff and skip the filler. And - _you_ know, nobody better, how long reports_ take_! If I have to describe every project as I do it I won’t have time to _do_ them all, and it’s often as not the little one-off I did on impulse that winds up having the most follow-through. If you want plans I can drown you in them, but if you want results? If you want colonial imperialism? Land enclosures? Race prejudice - backed by ‘science,’ no less! Sexual repression? Industrial exploitation? The unending Irish Question? Incompetent generals and blindly obedient troops? Leave me alone to do my job. You _know_ I’m productive.”

Dagon popped a cream cake into her mouth and sucked it down with a slurp. “You’re testing a project by putting it in an angel’s path and waiting for him to do something with it, for Satan’s sake! You pass that design along and I can have half a dozen other tempters working on it by the end of the week.”

“What, so Nickerbokkur in New York or Germain in Paris can do something flashy with _my_ work, and scoop _my_ credit? So some idiot can muck it up, convince Beelzebub it’s too flawed, and get the whole thing scrapped before I can work out the kinks? Why not lightly peel me right now, save yourself some time?”

Dagon made a non-committal noise, which Crowley took for progress.

The meal didn’t run as long as he’d anticipated (he had unconsciously allowed enough time to feed Aziraphale), but good old London came to his aid and gave him plenty of things to keep her busy. He promenaded her through Mayfair, took her to the Exhibition in Kensington (he was sick of the Exhibition already, and it still had five months to go), discussing the potential for evil in every innovation; showed her how his energy system spread his discord (and Aziraphale’s harmony, but he thought he managed to sell her on that as a temporary inconvenience) well past the boundaries of the actual construct; guided her through railroad terminals and slums and halls of power, took credit for random human ills; regaled her with stories of Spring-Heeled Jack, ghost flaps, riots, and gruesome crimes (mostly culled from the _Illustrated Police News_); flattered, cajoled, explained, improvised, built and tore down glorious castles in the air, and generally did everything he could to distract her from doubling back to the notion of _collaborating_ with the _enemy_.

At last Dagon asked for his help in finding the entrance she’d come up from, in the moat of the Tower of London. (He had succeeded, if nothing else, in getting her thoroughly lost.) Taking a second wind at the prospect of being almost at the end of his performance, he hailed a cab, handed her in as if she were the queen, and squeezed himself into a corner to accommodate her crinoline. She seemed happy, by Hell’s standards (Dagon had always been one of the more cheerful demons; she had laughed and chatted pleasantly while she flayed the skin from his hands after the failure of the Temptation in the Wilderness), so he ventured to ask: “Not that this hasn’t been a pleasure from start to finish, but it’s not like you to take a day off work to poke around upstairs. Is there something I need to watch out for?”

“Just the usual,” said Dagon. “The office has been slightly more annoying than usual, and I’d never seen one of the new-style cities, so I thought I’d come up and take a quick look around.”

“It’s a good thing I wasn’t out of town. You can do that sort of thing fruitfully in a lot of places, but here in the Great Metropolis, you _need_ a guide.”

“It’s certainly been more amusing with one than it would have been without,” she conceded. “But don’t think I didn’t notice how your hustled me out of Soho.”

Crowley’s mouth went dry. “Hustled? Out of Soho? News to me. If you wanted to see Soho specifically you should have said something. It’s all working folks, small factories, and starving creative types, not that much to see, I would have thought, but if you want I can redirect the cab.”

Dagon shook her head. “No, I’m satisfied. For now. When will you be going up to the universities, by the way?”

“I had been going tomorrow or the next day, but your visit, delightful as it’s been, prevented me from taking care of the business I’d meant to see to first, so now I’ll be another day or two. I’ve got plenty of time.”

“By earthly standards, I suppose you do.” She smiled at him thoughtfully, as a slaughterman might smile at a pig. “But we don’t play by earthly rules or for earthly stakes in Hell, Crowley. Don’t lose sight of the big picture.”

“Which is?”

“We need _two_ things from you: results, and_ loyalty_. Don’t get cocky, don’t get lazy, and _don’t_ get distracted. You’re the kind of demon who attracts rumors.”

“What rumors?”

She bared all her teeth in a broad, broad smile. “That would be telling!”

The cab pulled up at the Tower, the cabbie accepted his fare and grumbled at the lack of tip, and Crowley walked Dagon around the moat till she opened the gate to Hell with a stamp of her foot. He watched her descend step by step into wet darkness until the gate closed itself behind her and he was alone, apart from a raven, beside a dry ditch. The bird croaked at him.

Crowley collapsed upon the grass. “That was, that was too close,” he croaked back at the raven. “She went straight to it. To the heart. If Aziraphale had been here - I don’t know. I don’t _know!_ She’s Beelzebub’s right hand and she went straight to the spot and there’s _rumors_.”

“Gronk,” said the raven.

Crowley pressed his palms flat against the ground to still their trembling, but fear spread outward from him, rippling through the grass. “This calls for gin. And planning. And more gin.”


	3. Blame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale screws up badly.
> 
> (So do I. I'm so, so sorry for this.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: My sincere apologies for killing a queer. I think we need at least a ten-year moratorium on that, yet here I am.

The moment Aziraphale and Uriel landed in Cambridge, not far from the Mathematical Bridge, he felt the pull of need and set off toward Queen’s College. Uriel placed her hand on his arm. “Where are you going?”

“Why, to the potential suicide,” said Aziraphale. “Holed up in her room. I think that’s a her. That could very well be the problem, since female-bodied students aren’t admitted. I’ll sort it out when I get there.”

“That’s not your assignment,” said Uriel, consulting her notebook and doing something fiddly and miraculous with her pencil. “Your nearest assigned charges are in that direction.” She pointed down the river.

“But - the nearest charge who needs me is right there.” He pointed at the window from which the darkness poured. “Can’t you _feel_ that? She’s _miserable_!”

“No doubt she’ll still be miserable when you’ve finished what you came to do,” said Uriel. “If the problem is the wrong body, you won’t be able to help her anyway.”

“I won’t be able to fix the _root_ of the problem, without authorization, but that doesn’t mean I can’t _help_ her.” A happy thought struck him, and he bounced on his toes. (He did not realize that he also did The Thing with his eyes.) “_You_ could authorize it. You could, you could even fix it yourself!”

Uriel made an impatient noise. “But I _won’t_. You know it’s against policy.”

“Oh, but Raphael will hardly be in a position to challenge_ you_ on the subject! Have you ever healed a major medical condition? It’s incredibly satisfying.”

“I’m not here to heal things! This is an _inspection_. Of _you_. Fulfilling an _assignment_.”

“Well, my normal procedure, when on assignment, is to start by dealing with whatever needs present themselves in the area and work my way out from there. And this is clearly the biggest need in the area.”

Uriel rolled her eyes. “Without medical intervention you can’t _do_ anything by barging in on a misery like that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s amazing what you can do with the right knock on the wrong door. Once in contact I’ll find my way all right.”

“You can easily deal with the matter when she comes out to fill her human needs. _After_ you’ve dealt with your assignments.”

“But she may _not_ fill her needs, not when she’s as miserable as _that_!”

Uriel made a note, frowning. “Aziraphale. They’re getting further away. Stop wasting my time and _come do your job._”

“But this _is_ -“

“She’s _not_ a significant person! No potential for greatness, or even moderate influence. The only thing distinguishing her is unhappiness, which will probably keep her from doing anything worthwhile.”

“What has_ that_ got to do with anything? She’s suffering! I can’t just leave someone who’s suffering -“

“You can and you have,” snapped Uriel. “We _all_ have. If you were still in Oxford you wouldn’t even know about her.”

“But I’m _not_ in Oxford, I’m here now, and I _do_ know - Please, a quick word and a blessing, enough to see her through the afternoon. I’ll be back in a jiff.“

“I begin to understand why Sandalphon’s always complaining about you. You can’t fix despair _in a jiff_. You could be stuck in that mess for days. You have your orders. Fulfill them. The sooner you start the sooner you can return and waste time on this nonentity. For now,_ do as you’re told!_”

Her eyes began to glow and the mention of Sandalphon pinched Aziraphale, hard, in the gut. “All right, all right, one moment -“ He aimed a blessing at the mass of misery, something to strengthen his charge’s will a bit, and turned away. Obeying was his duty, he knew that, but walking away was like walking through a wall of knives, and his conscience had to yell at him very loudly in order to render him capable of not turning back at every step.

The assigned influences didn’t go well. He couldn’t relax enough to connect properly with anyone, every move he make felt awkward, and Uriel’s critiques in between attempts were justifiably harsh. She kept using miracles to direct him to the next charge, which threw his rhythm off. He normally didn’t waste power to track down targets, but drifted in the areas they might be expected to frequent with his eyes and ears open, taking the opportunity to spread a little cheer in his usual way and toss off a blessing where it seemed suitable. Though time-consuming, this procedure set up a favorable atmosphere and tended to land him in the right places at the right times to connect with the right people, eventually. This business of going straight to assigned charges, as if they were mere boxes to be checked off, was disorienting; and honestly, not one of the targets _needed_ him, anyhow.

Still, he got through the day somehow, and hurried back through the dusk toward Queen’s as soon as Uriel shut her notebook and said: “Well, that was pathetic, but at least we’re done. Where are you going?”

He wanted to snap at her, but one must be patient with archangels. “That poor woman! You remember! That you wouldn’t let me help to begin with.”

She glided alongside him. “Have you been fretting about that the whole time?”

“How could I not? It’s no wonder I’ve made a hash of all the assignments - I’ve been so worried I couldn’t concentrate. If you’d only let me deal with her to start with -“

“You need to learn to put these things out of your mind. It obviously interferes with the way you do your job.”

“How can it possibly interfere with my job? It _is_ \- oh. Oh no. Nonononononono!”

He started to run; but Azrael was already leaving.

He found the male body - slim and fair, eyes suffused with blood - left behind, hanging from a boat’s painter tied to a gas fixture in her chamber. Her room was tidy, her papers and books neatly stacked, her suicide note weighted down by an inkstand in the center of her mantelpiece. “No one is to blame,” it said.

He had sent her a blessing. A blessing of strength of will. Not enough, apparently, to enable her to live. But enough to enable her to obtain the rope, to tie the knot, to kick the chair, to take arms against her sea of troubles and by opposing - end.

Aziraphale raised the alarm, summoned the right people, told a vague story as to how he’d come to find her, and watched her borne away beneath a sheet.

“Will was my best mate,” said the stunned boy from the chamber opposite. “We were supposed to start a walking tour to the Lakes tomorrow. Why would he do this? I knew he had a black dog on his shoulder lately, but - he never - we never - why would he do this? What could be so wrong that he couldn’t _tell_ me?”

Aziraphale sat up with him, long into the night, until he had cried himself to sleep, then removed the boy’s shoes and coat, tucked him into bed, blessed him to sleep without dreams and wake with his best memories of his friend, and left him forever answerless. He was surprised to find Uriel still lingering, on his way out. “You spared him from being the one to find her,” she said, in a subdued voice.

“Yes. Well. If you’d let me do things my way, I could have talked her into living to start her walking tour with him. And once started, she’d have kept on. Another day, another year, maybe an entire life. Humans don’t really want to die, when they’re like this. They only want to stop feeling _wrong_.”

“If you’d done things_ your_ way, she’d have been dead before you got into town,” Uriel retorted. “You’d have still been eating lunch and taking the train and influencing random people.”

“If I had been alone, yes, that is true. However, having brought me here, you should have allowed me to proceed in my usual fashion, and I would have been in time. Instead you made me -”

“I couldn’t _make_ you do anything.” A new, foreign note entered her voice; a little shrill; a little defensive. “I never forced you! You voluntarily followed my suggestions.”

Aziraphale stared at her. “Orders. You gave me _orders_.”

“Lodge a complaint then,” said Uriel, as if sucking on a lemon. “We’ll see what Gabriel thinks of it.”

Aziraphale had a feeling that he knew exactly what Gabriel would think of it; but one must do one’s best. “I suppose we will. Is there any other way I can assist you?”

Uriel opened her notebook one last time, made one last note. “I think not. I still need to inspect your headquarters, but I can do that without you. We’ll be in touch.” And she was gone.

Aziraphale started the long walk to the station, with no idea whether or not he had missed the last train.

_No one is to blame,_ the note had said. Which was kind, but erroneous.

Aziraphale knew exactly who he blamed.

Complaint or not, it wasn’t Uriel.

\---  
Uriel removed half the books in the Philosophy section, and left the fiction in disarray.

A boy brought a note asking him to meet Crowley in St. James Park. Aziraphale was reaching for his hat when Gabriel appeared in order to dismiss all his protests about Uriel and lecture him extensively on fraternizing and the consequences thereof, so that he was an hour late.

The meeting did not go well.

A.Z. Fell & Co remained closed for the rest of July, the proprietor wrapped in his wings in the small flat above the retail space; trying to breathe; afraid to stir lest he do even more damage in the world than he had already done.


	4. Going to Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the quarrel in St. James Park, Crowley runs through his coping mechanisms.  
(Callbacks to earlier installments, particularly "Defining Frivolous.")

** _Fraternizing?_ **

_So, what, I’m Lower Ranks now? Maybe The Help? He’s afraid he’ll be caught slumming?_

The god-blessed little _hypocrite!_

Crowley plunged across Piccadilly Street, inadvertently panicking three horses to create a five-carriage pileup, and not noticing.

_Blessing and cursing, mending and breaking, reading and smoking, body modding, aura manipulation, miracle efficiency, aspect changing - that was** fraternizing,** was it?_

A mark he’d been cultivating for over a year, an industrialist uneasy in his Avarice, approached with a smile. Crowley cut him dead and left him floundering affronted in his wake.

_The Arrangement? Bearing each other up at the end of the Flood? Evenings at Phillida’s with our heads in a cloud of smoke and calculation? Passing on the street without a glance to pivot perfectly in unison around a node and lock our powers into London’s and England’s - **that** felt like **fraternizing** to him?_

The gaslines feeding the streetlamps strained and popped in the unprecedented pressure of his passing.

_**Hamlet?** Dozens of little convenient interventions to spare **his** miracle budget? All those damn funerals he couldn’t face alone? All those shortcuts I took through Hell just to fetch him those books and scrolls and manuscripts he'd cached all over the place? How many **hundreds** of times has he given me the old puppy dog eyes and I’ve coughed up whatever he wanted, however he wanted it? How many of his wants did I see and fill, without him ever mentioning them, happy to get a Smile in return? But I ask for one favor, **one**, to protect **both** of us, and suddenly that’s **fraternizing**?_

Crowley crashed through the elaborate doors of the current incarnation of his building and thundered straight through the marble lobby, ignoring the greetings of those of his tenants he passed along the way. Toffee-nosed social climbers, every one of them, or they wouldn’t have rooms in _this_ building, would they? Unbidden, an image of them scattered and smeared across the shining floor when they got in Ligur’s way flashed across the visual center of his brain. He slammed open the door to his private stair (damn stairs, next incarnation would have lifts - _if_ he lasted that long, _if_ Hell wasn’t on his tail this moment,_ if_ the life he’d built up block by block wasn’t about to end ignominiously in the Pit) without bothering to unlock it, and hurled himself around and up, around and up the spiral designed to give him the high-ground advantage over pursuers; but it wouldn’t be _enough_, would it? Nothing he _had_ would be _enough_.

_Evenings in the book shop. “Coincidentally” getting adjacent seats in concert halls and theaters. “Chasing” each other “vengefully” from England to Egypt. “Accidentally” encountering each other in coffeehouses and exhibitions and taverns and galleries and Paris._

_Paris._

The door to his flat leaped open as if to escape from him, and then slammed and locked itself behind him. Side tables and sofas scurried out of his way as he tossed his hat toward the rack and descended upon the sideboard. “Hypocritical _bastard_,” he growled, dumping brandy into the first tumbler that came to hand, downing it, and pouring himself another. “Why did I ever waste my time?” He tossed back the brandy and plopped into the slick horsehair wing chair that slid over to accommodate him, directly under his skylight, to pour the next drink.

** _Paris._ **

_Dressing up like a wedding cake, broadcasting radiance all over western Europe, sailing blithely across the Channel and up the Seine in a boat like a fortress outside and a fantasy of a seraglio inside - sure, we’ll call that **fraternizing!** Strolling straight into the damn Reign of Terror near as nothing powerless, so **sure** that I’d, I’d just **turn up** and **fix** anything that went wrong, and of course I **did**, **of course** I did, I **always** do, I always **will,** blasted angel --_

For a moment Crowley held his breath and a mouthful of brandy, sideswiped by memory: wings scales skin hair eyes mouths hands, _hands_: undoing Aziraphale’s cuff with one hand, turning the angel’s wrist with the other and pressing his mouth to the palm, the locus of power; Aziraphale crying out with astonishment as much as with pleasure. _Why, yes, I **do** know what you want, even when you don’t, and I’ll provide it if you’ll let me. **Let me.**_

_I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley._

He swallowed the brandy and poured another, hands shaking. Of all the fantastical fears the angel could spin up out of next to nothing, how could he have conjured up _that_ one? As if Crowley would run off to oblivion and leave him _alone_, exposed to the hostility of Hell and the rapacity of Heaven and the endless needs of Earth with only his stubbornness for a shield and his brilliant slow easily flustered wits for a weapon? Never, never, _never_ \- how could he not _know_, after all this time? After _Paris_? After that strange moment when Crowley, looking down at Aziraphale’s face, also looked up at his own, in miraculous eye-searing color, to see his angel laughing in surprised delight behind yellow eyes; when they had literally _been_ each other for an unfathomable instant? Terrifying and satisfying and unspeakable; and then they’d crashed back into themselves and he’d been so _sure_ that they knew each other through and through then, accepted everything, understood _everything_ -

Evidently not. The brandy decanter was empty. He leaned over and opened the cabinet, pulled out the first bottle that came to hand. Whiskey. Good enough.

The alcohol did its job, mellowing pain till it no longer felt like fury. He’d been here before - nothing new under the sun. Only, after Paris, he’d thought he’d never be here again.

It wasn’t as if Aziraphale hadn’t warned him. _It’ll be **so much worse**...the feelings don’t **match up**...you’ll feel used..._

_Yes, angel, because I **am** used, and glad enough to be useful. I **accept** that. Why can’t **you**?_

Same reason his poor pigheaded angel couldn’t accept all the other things he lied to himself about.

Crowley could think about today now. Aziraphale’d arrived an hour late, his radiance dim and blotchy, his manner stiff and distracted. If Crowley hadn’t been so preoccupied with the potentially desperate urgency of acquiring the only weapon that could give him any edge, he’d have noticed that something was wrong, but after waiting so long he’d been at his rope’s end, gone straight to what he wanted without studying the lay of the land. He’d violated basic tempting protocol, because it had been so long since he’d had to bother with that sort of thing with his angel. The more anxious he’d grown about Hell, the more complacent he’d grown about Aziraphale.

_Idiot._

He should have known at that pompous “You are Fallen” nonsense, like it was the first century all over again. Something had spooked Aziraphale all the way back to “we can’t be friends.” Not quite back to Square One - he hadn’t sounded dubious of the Arrangement, or seemed reluctant to meet, despite his lateness. But far back enough. Bloody timing. Crowley was too tired and too frustrated and too hurt and too _scared_ to start picking away at those defenses again.

_It’ll always be like this,_ he thought, staring at the empty whiskey bottle. _Always. The feelings will never match up. Heaven will always come before me for him. That’s not his fault. Or mine. It’s not as if I can catch him if he Falls. Not as if I can break into Heaven and fingersnap his manacles away, even if he’d acknowledge that he’s in chains. Not as if he can wrap his wings around me and raise me to some plane where I’m not constantly one misstep away from the wrath of Hell. He’d do it if he could. But one side or the other would destroy him, too, if he tried._

_So what is the use of grinding on through Eternity, playing a game we can’t win, over and over and over till our sides catch up with us?_

He dropped the bottle onto the floor, and the empty glass after it.

_I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley!_

No. No._ No._ He’d felt this way before, he recognized this even through the alcohol haze. He hadn’t lived over five thousand years without getting a sense of his own cycles. Dagon had caught up with him on the way down and given him a shove, and then this business with Aziraphale had made that worse, and now he felt like existence was unbearable; but he’d been this low before. He knew, for a _fact_, he could survive it.

Sleep. That was all he needed. Let the brain repair itself a bit. Everything would look better when he woke up.

Crowley pulled off most of the clothes that weren’t skin on the way to the bedroom, keeping only one to transform into a nightshirt. The bed had a wide white coverlet and four posts carved like trees with snakes twined round them. Aziraphale had seen the sketch for the design and deemed it “melodramatic,” as if that were a bad thing.

He had to climb to surmount the featherbed, but it sank beneath his weight and closed around him like an angel’s arms.


	5. Taking Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meltdowns are all very well, but when duty calls, Aziraphale answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> St. James Park, as readers of the book know, has traditionally been a place of clandestine meetings. Not just of the secret agent sort. In fact, during Victoria’s reign(when mollyhouses were replaced by less accessible private clubs), it was notoriously cruisy. Do people still say “cruisy?” Well, I do, so someone does.

Soho was full of noises and Aziraphale had been ignoring all of them; but even in distress he remained attuned to the sounds of his own shop. The opening and closing of a door, followed by furtive movements downstairs, were enough to cause him to put away his wings. The pounding of heavy fists on wood drew him to the window, where he opened the casement and thrust out his head. “I’m closed,” he called down, raising his voice enough to be heard around the corner of the building by whoever was assaulting his front door. “As you might have guessed from the Closed sign, the locked door, and the complete absence of light. Go away before you wake the whole street!”

The pounding stopped. A shadow backed around the corner till it could look up at him. “Mr. - Mr. Fell?”

“Yes, of _course_ Mr. Fell, who else would be sleeping above Mr. Fell’s shop? If you want a book come back in the morning. I’ll open at nine. Or thereabouts.”

“Shorry! S’sorry!” Whoever he was, he was on the wrong side of one too many drams of gin. “I got to get my girl home.”

“My good sir, you will find no girls _here_!”

“_My_ girl. My _daughter_. Disobedient little hussy! Bad girl! Shameless! Saw her run in.”

“Through a_ locked door_?” He knew the man now, a carpenter; a stiff-necked fellow, who had five daughters and considered that a trial. “You’re drunk, Mr. Hazlet. You probably saw a stray newspaper. Go home.”

“M’not drunk, m’merry!”

“Merriment is not expressed by waking up honest tradesmen in the middle of the night. _Go home_!” Aziraphale nudged him.

Hazlet mumbled something that might be an apology and stumbled away. Aziraphale watched him out of sight, lit a lamp, and carried it downstairs. “It’s all right, Miss Hazlet,” he said, holding the lamp low to illuminate his face for the two girls hiding in his back room. “He’s gone.”

Miss Hazlet had a bloody nose and was dressed as a boy. The girl with her - goodness, that was one of Little Jane’s granddaughter’s, had her selfsame eyes! - carried two bundles and stepped between him and Miss Hazlet, defiant and hopeful at the same time. “We don’t mean no harm,” she said. “I don’t know what possessed me to try the door, but it was open and he was right behind us and we didn’t think. We’ll go. We haven’t touched nothing.”

“Bless you, child, I know you haven’t! You can’t go anywhere with Miss Hazlet’s face in that state. You sit down and I’ll bring you a basin and some tea.”

Aziraphale had been going through the motions when he’d put his head through the window; but with every step in this process he felt more and more himself. Miss Hazlet’s nose was soon set to rights (she didn’t know it was broken, so fixing that was in no way out of line), he replaced her bloodstained shirt with one of his own, which happened to cover up her real shape rather better than her original one, and tea got them both talking. He soon had them sorted out, with train fare (and a bit over; which they accepted in kindness to his ineptitude in pulling the coins out of their ears); a letter of introduction to a builder he happened to know in the Midlands, who had run away himself some years ago; full stomachs, a hamper of sandwiches, and a blessing. They left for Charing Cross Station shortly before dawn. Little Jane’s granddaughter kissed him in parting, and Miss Hazlett solemnly assured him that they would pay him back.

“You will do as you think best,” he answered. “But I’m not parting with anything I can’t spare. Sooner or later you’ll encounter someone I will never meet, who’ll need this trifling amount much more than I. If you see that they get it, I for one will count us even.”

He watched them go, and tidied up, thinking connectedly at last, ashamed of himself for breaking down as well as for all the other things he had to be ashamed of, but no longer paralyzed by shame’s weight. He was a coward, and weak, and often sadly foolish; very well, he was. That did not exempt him from the necessity of meeting each day’s duty as it came, and doing the best he could with it.

The last time he’d crossed paths with another Guardian Angel outside of the inhibiting confines of Gabriel’s office had been thousands of years before, and he had come to accept that, for whatever reason, none of the more mobile angels wished to visit with him. So he didn’t know whether others in the profession had developed an affinity with some subset of their charges, or if his sense of special responsibility to a group his human languages had not yet developed terms to describe was simply another way in which he had become an outlier. These girls were more “his,” somehow, than girls who ran away with boys would be. Dodgson was more “his” than other equally worthy scholars were. And his failure with poor “Will” in Cambridge was particularly shaming because he had failed one with a particular claim upon him. Nothing would undo that now, and he could only resolve to do better the next time. And the next. And the next.

Which left him now, today, with his duty to Crowley, who he had also failed; though, he hoped, less irrevocably.

Aziraphale set the shop to rights, opened at nine, paid an urchin half a crown to deliver a note, and spent the morning finding books for humans who wanted them, and providing other services to humans who came in for other reasons. Sometimes his neighbors needed a friendly face to talk to, or refuge from home pressures, or a quiet corner in which to write or draw, or access to some work or other not easily found anywhere but his back room. He did not encourage his scholarly guests to spread the word about his private treasure trove, but if the right person walked through the door, he had no hesitation in bringing them, beyond their hope, the very thing they needed - so long as they didn’t try to take it with them. He didn’t mind selling the new books he stocked in the front; but his collection was sacrosanct, and he knew better than to so much as loan one item of it out.

The urchin returned without an answer, to tell him that no one answered the door he’d knocked on, and the gentlemen who spied him knocking were jolly rude, so he’d slipped the note under the door. Aziraphale told him he’d done exactly right and found another sixpence in the boy’s ear. Well, near it. When he left for a light lunch, he fully expected to be greeted by another urchin, or Crowley himself, on his return. When this did not happen, he kept the shop open later than usual, hoping one or the other would materialize, and was disappointed.

Crowley must be very angry indeed. He hadn’t left town; their system, and in fact all of London, would feel different, if he had. So in the morning he wrote a more conciliatory note, found another urchin, and dispatched him, smoking and pacing while he awaited his return; with the same result.

This pattern continued for three long, hot, muggy days. And Crowley didn’t even know his Cambridge temptations hadn’t happened yet! It wasn’t like him to ignore an attempt at communication, not even when upset. Something was Wrong.

Or was that Aziraphale’s conscience? Or the creeping selfishness of his anxiety to see his, his - adversary? His peculiar charge? His colleague? His demon? The person he had signally failed to take care of despite their acknowledged mutual dependency?

Why did everything have to be so _complicated_? Why couldn’t he just go and check on someone he had hurt, whom he cared about, with whom he had shared interests, without all this backing and forthing and second-guessing of himself? But if Heaven came calling, what reason would he offer them for bearding his adversary in his lair? He couldn’t think of a single one that wouldn’t elicit one of a range of undesirable faces from Gabriel.

But - if _Hell_ came calling on Crowley and found a bunch of notes from an angel pushed under his door, undesirable faces would be the least of it. This thought got Aziraphale moving at last, on Sunday morning when the churchbells were still crashing and clanging and pealing from all quarters of the metropolis.

First up, a stroll over to St. James’s Park. As he’d expected, Crowley was not there, but certain other regulars whom he knew by sight were. He had no difficulty in establishing discreetly that none had seen his associate with the red whiskers and the mourning dress in weeks. One sympathetic young man, a witness to their quarrel, even told him that he’d seen the fellow nearly get run over crossing Piccadilly, and had kept an eye open for him ever since. “If you can’t get word at his lodgings you had better check the hospitals,” he urged. “He appeared to me like a man who didn’t care whether or not he did himself a mischief. If you need a cat’s paw to act for you, I’m game.”

Aziraphale did his best to reassure him in the teeth of his own anxiety, gave him a small blessing, and made his way, by a circuitous route, to Crowley’s building. He’d never been inside, but had helped with the design, and they’d gone over his options for visiting under different circumstances more than once. Suddenly carrying a parcel and looking like a tradesman, he strode in at a side entrance and went up the back stairs. When no answer came to his knock upon the service entrance to Crowley’s flat, he laid his hand on the wall and Sensed. Nothing; not even Crowley. So he pushed the locked door open and entered the rear hall, where he finally felt the demon’s aura, faint and solitary, and followed it to the parlor.

The air in the disheveled room smelled stale, and the light from the skylight shone dusty and harsh onto a horsehair chair surrounded by the clutter of a drinking session. Only one empty decanter and one empty bottle - that could be worse. The coat he’d last seen Crowley wearing lay half-on, half-off the sofa, the waistcoat draped across a side table, the cravat on the Persian carpet. He followed the trail of discarded clothing, clenching and unclenching his hands.

The bed looked even more melodramatic in reality than it had in the design sketches, and the feather bed and pillows nearly swallowed Crowley, only the bright shock of hair marking where his head lay. Apart from a layer of dust, all seemed in order. Aziraphale stepped into the room, softly as a cat; and Crowley twisted with half a cry and a defensive jerk of all his limbs.

“It’s only me, my dear.”

Crowley twitched like a dead frog in an electric current.

Aziraphale bent over him. “Crowley. All’s well. Nothing to fear.”

All the long limbs spasmed, and Crowley breathed too fast for a sleeping being, a faint whining note sounding deep in his throat. He flopped onto his back, jaw clenched, brow knitted. Somehow, his spectacles were still on.

“Oh, my poor dear boy,” said Aziraphale. “This isn’t doing you any good.” He stroked back sweat-damp hair. “It’s time to sleep properly now. Peacefully. Dream only what you need to dream, and wake when you’re refreshed.” He kissed the center of the brow, feeling the skin and muscles relax beneath his lips and the blessing ripple outward. Crowley’s breathing slowed.

“I’m taking your spectacles off now, dear heart. And then I’ll tidy up, and check your assignments, and see to everything. You have nothing to worry about. We’ll talk when you’re ready.” Aziraphale set the spectacles on the washstand and began folding clothes away in the unnecessarily gigantic black armoire. When he had the room set to rights he paused at the door to check that he hadn’t missed anything.

The blessing gave the atmosphere a golden sheen. That would never do! He set his hand to the doorknob and gingerly opened the box inside him into which he had ruthlessly shoved - a great many things he wasn’t going to think about right now - and drew out enough of what he needed to set a curse on anyone, apart from him and Crowley, who meddled with this flat before the demon woke. Any humans who came within its reach should feel a mere distaste at approaching, escalating to dread and eventually panic if they persisted. A demon familiar with Aziraphale’s curses might recognize his signature in it; but the only such demon anywhere slept in the midst of it, and any others who approached should see only Crowley protecting himself from disturbance, and as far as he could tell, the golden glow of the blessing was nearly undetectable beneath the red glare of the curse.

The office was a small, bare room - a desk, a cabinet, the treasured Da Vinci cartoon on the wall, and - “Oh, goodness! How has he managed to hold on to _this_?” The chair, almost elaborate enough to be a throne, dated from the Black Knight days. Crowley’d used to lounge in the thing, and gesture with a goblet, and see how far he could push his behavior before someone recognized the absurdity of it all and started laughing in nervous terror, at which point he would laugh, too, to the relief of his minions. He’d given up having minions after that; said it was too exhausting, being on stage constantly.

Aziraphale sat down in the ridiculous thing, and went through the most recent paperwork. Apparently no new assignments had arrived, and the only pending one was Cambridge. He hesitated between dashing off a fallacious compliance report, and returning to town to do the job, and decided he’d better head up again and get it done, just in case. He’d use the opportunity to look in on “Will’s” friend at the same time, assuming he was still in town. And he’d check in here quarterly, to collect any new assignments, keep the dust from accumulating, and so on.

Crowley had slept for a year once, and he’d certainly been distressed enough by their last meeting to do it again. When he woke, he’d be sensible, they could discuss everything, and there’d be no more of that holy water nonsense. It wouldn’t be so long, in the overall scheme of things. Aziraphale could manage affairs for both of them and live with the weight of unsettled matters hanging over him for that long.

It was the least he could do, considering how he’d mucked everything up.

-30-


End file.
